Pub Date : 2020-06-19DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2020.1780837
J. Dauben
As Christopher Cullen explains in his preface to Heavenly Numbers, this book offers an introductory history of mathematical astronomy in China from the late third century BCE when China was unified...
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Pub Date : 2020-06-12DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2020.1778282
Kathleen M. Clark
{"title":"Women who count: Honoring African American women mathematicians","authors":"Kathleen M. Clark","doi":"10.1080/26375451.2020.1778282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26375451.2020.1778282","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36683,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Mathematics","volume":"35 1","pages":"253 - 255"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/26375451.2020.1778282","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41910101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-28DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2020.1765504
Tony Crilly
{"title":"Pythagoras’ legacy","authors":"Tony Crilly","doi":"10.1080/26375451.2020.1765504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26375451.2020.1765504","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36683,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Mathematics","volume":"35 1","pages":"246 - 247"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/26375451.2020.1765504","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43768971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-27DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2020.1770015
J. Bair, Piotr Błaszczyk, Elías Fuentes Guillén, P. Heinig, V. Kanovei, M. Katz
In a paper published in 1970, Grattan-Guinness argued that Cauchy, in his 1821 Cours d'Analyse, may have plagiarized Bolzano's Rein analytischer Beweis (RB), first published in 1817. That paper was subsequently discredited in several works, but some of its assumptions still prevail today. In particular, it is usually considered that Cauchy did not develop his notion of the continuity of a function before Bolzano developed his in RB and that both notions are essentially the same. We argue that both assumptions are incorrect, and that it is implausible that Cauchy's initial insight into that notion, which eventually evolved to an approach using infinitesimals, could have been borrowed from Bolzano's work. Furthermore, we account for Bolzano's interest in that notion and focus on his discussion of a definition by Kästner (in Section 183 of his 1766 book), which the former seems to have misrepresented at least partially.
{"title":"Continuity between Cauchy and Bolzano: issues of antecedents and priority","authors":"J. Bair, Piotr Błaszczyk, Elías Fuentes Guillén, P. Heinig, V. Kanovei, M. Katz","doi":"10.1080/26375451.2020.1770015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26375451.2020.1770015","url":null,"abstract":"In a paper published in 1970, Grattan-Guinness argued that Cauchy, in his 1821 Cours d'Analyse, may have plagiarized Bolzano's Rein analytischer Beweis (RB), first published in 1817. That paper was subsequently discredited in several works, but some of its assumptions still prevail today. In particular, it is usually considered that Cauchy did not develop his notion of the continuity of a function before Bolzano developed his in RB and that both notions are essentially the same. We argue that both assumptions are incorrect, and that it is implausible that Cauchy's initial insight into that notion, which eventually evolved to an approach using infinitesimals, could have been borrowed from Bolzano's work. Furthermore, we account for Bolzano's interest in that notion and focus on his discussion of a definition by Kästner (in Section 183 of his 1766 book), which the former seems to have misrepresented at least partially.","PeriodicalId":36683,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Mathematics","volume":"35 1","pages":"207 - 224"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/26375451.2020.1770015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46109628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2020.1741302
Sepideh Alassi
Jacob Bernoulli's entries about mechanics in his scientific notebook, the ‘Meditationes’, reveal new facts about the history of the catenary curve. Bernoulli's analyses show that the catenaria, velaria, lintearia and elastica curves together form a family of curves, which I will refer to as the funicularia family. Attending to the history of the whole family of these curves provides remarkable insights into the origin of the catenary problem and the process of its discovery. Studying the ‘Meditationes’ together with Bernoulli's correspondence and publications shows how analysis of one curve led him to the discovery of the others. As a result, this study shows that – although Leonhard Euler is known to be the one who unified the catenary problem and the elastica problem in 1728 – Jacob Bernoulli had in fact proven the same more than thirty years earlier, providing in his notebook a general differential equation for this family of curves. Furthermore, I demonstrate Jacob Bernoulli's priority over his brother Johann in finding the velaria curve.
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Pub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2020.1745495
Ellen Abrams
The BSHM is delighted to announce that the 2018–19 Taylor and Francis Early Career Prize has been awarded to Ellen Abrams of Cornell University for her essay ‘“An Inalienable Prerogative of a Liberated Spirit”: Postulating American Mathematics.’ The judging panel commended the essay for its combination of strong research and accessible style, noting in particular the author’s ability to contextualise mathematics without loss of readability. British Journal for the History of Mathematics, 2020 Vol. 35, No. 2, 187, https://doi.org/10.1080/26375451.2020.1745495
{"title":"Winner of the 2018–19 Taylor and Francis Early Career Prize","authors":"Ellen Abrams","doi":"10.1080/26375451.2020.1745495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26375451.2020.1745495","url":null,"abstract":"The BSHM is delighted to announce that the 2018–19 Taylor and Francis Early Career Prize has been awarded to Ellen Abrams of Cornell University for her essay ‘“An Inalienable Prerogative of a Liberated Spirit”: Postulating American Mathematics.’ The judging panel commended the essay for its combination of strong research and accessible style, noting in particular the author’s ability to contextualise mathematics without loss of readability. British Journal for the History of Mathematics, 2020 Vol. 35, No. 2, 187, https://doi.org/10.1080/26375451.2020.1745495","PeriodicalId":36683,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Mathematics","volume":"35 1","pages":"187 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/26375451.2020.1745495","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47623632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-20DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2020.1745493
Isobel Falconer
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Pub Date : 2020-04-20DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2020.1745494
Isobel Falconer
s from past meetings BSHM Christmas Meeting Saturday 7 December 2019 University of Warwick Firstly, very many apologies for omitting Robin Wilson’s abstract from the report of the Christmas Meeting in the last issue of the BJHM. Robin very nobly stood in at short notice for a speaker who dropped out, and we are grateful to him for doing so. The missing abstract follows. Robin Wilson (Open University): Hunting and counting trees: the world of Cayley and Sylvester Where did the word ‘graph’ (in connection with graph theory) come from? How many paraffins are there with a given number of carbon atoms? In this illustrated talk I shall outline some contributions of Arthur Cayley and James Joseph Sylvester, with particular reference to the enumeration of trees and chemical molecules between the years 1857 and 1889. No previous knowledge of graph theory is assumed. Research in Progress Saturday 29 February 2020 Queens College, Oxford Brigitte Stenhouse (Open University) Conjuring the ‘Spirit of Laplace’: the analytical works of Mary Somerville (1780–1872) In the early nineteenth century, the need to increase the acceptance and utilization of analytical mathematics in Great Britain was keenly felt by a group of mathematicians, who saw it as a remedy to the perceived decline of British science. Thus in 1826, Mary Somerville began preparing what was intended to be a translation of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste (printed in five volumes between 1799–1825). Published in 1831 under the title Mechanism of the Heavens, this work was received with great critical acclaim. There are, however, many key differences between the work of Somerville and that of Laplace. During the translation process, Somerville focused on preserving ‘the spirit of Laplace’ whilst making it both accessible and palatable to a British readership, through introducing diagrams and ideas of the sublime. Somerville treated but a small subset of the results found in the original work, but expanded and updated many sections by embedding relevant ideas from recent publications, all of which were notably developed outside of Britain. Whilst the work was thus described as ‘the most complete account of the discoveries of continental mathematicians in physical astronomy which exists in [English]’ (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society), it appears to have been commercially unsuccessful. Somerville’s second attempt at encouraging the study and adoption Volume 35 (2020) 181
来自过去的会议BSHM圣诞会议2019年12月7日星期六华威大学首先，非常抱歉在最后一期的BJHM圣诞会议报告中遗漏了Robin Wilson的摘要。罗宾在接到通知后很短的时间内非常高尚地代替了一位退出的演讲者，我们很感激他这样做。下面是缺失的摘要。罗宾·威尔逊（开放大学）：狩猎和数树：凯利和西尔维斯特的世界“图”这个词（与图论有关）是从哪里来的？给定碳原子数的链烷烃有多少？在这篇图文并茂的演讲中，我将概述Arthur Cayley和James Joseph Sylvester的一些贡献，特别是对1857年至1889年间树木和化学分子的列举。没有假设先前的图论知识。研究进展2020年2月29日星期六牛津皇后学院Brigitte Stenhouse（开放大学）唤起“拉普拉斯精神”：Mary Somerville（1780–1872）的分析著作在19世纪初，一群数学家敏锐地感受到英国需要提高分析数学的接受度和利用率，他们认为这是对英国科学衰落的一种补救措施。因此，在1826年，玛丽·萨默维尔开始准备翻译皮埃尔·西蒙·拉普拉斯的《Mécanique Céleste》（1799-1825年间印刷了五卷）。这部作品出版于1831年，书名为《天堂的机制》，受到了评论界的好评。然而，萨默维尔的作品和拉普拉斯的作品之间有许多关键的区别。在翻译过程中，萨默维尔专注于保留“拉普拉斯的精神”，同时通过引入崇高的图表和思想，让英国读者既能理解又能接受。萨默维尔只处理了原作中发现的一小部分结果，但通过嵌入最近出版物中的相关思想来扩展和更新了许多部分，所有这些出版物都是在英国以外显著发展起来的。虽然这项工作被描述为“[英语]中对大陆数学家在物理天文学中发现的最完整的描述”（《皇家天文学会月报》），但它似乎在商业上并不成功。萨默维尔鼓励研究和采用的第二次尝试第35卷（2020）181
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{"title":"The Italian case: Mathematics as a victim of\u0000 world politics","authors":"","doi":"10.1090/hmath/044/05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1090/hmath/044/05","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36683,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Mathematics","volume":"144 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78680316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Leitzmann’s unpublished report on the\u0000 Congress","authors":"","doi":"10.1090/hmath/044/15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1090/hmath/044/15","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36683,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Mathematics","volume":"8 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85283980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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